Page 96 of This Dark Descent
CHAPTER 34
MIKIRA
MIKIRA DIDN’T KNOWwhat she was doing.
She and Reid had barely reached the landing outside the ballroom in time to see Talyana haul Damien off. Reid had gone after them to the Anthir headquarters, and she’d sought Ari, but unable to find her, assumed the girl had gone with Reid. She’d returned to the manor, and for several long minutes, simply stood outside Damien’s door in a daze.
The world felt vast with possibilities. Her best friend had returned to her, only to manipulate and use her. Her sponsor was implicated in murder and had been arrested because of her foolishness. The final race for her family’s fate began a day from now, and everything was falling apart around her.
That was why she’d come here. She wanted to see if she could find any more evidence, because she’d finally remembered where she’d seen the corpse’s face: he was one of the men the Anthir had come looking for all those weeks ago. Still, she found it suspicious that this had happened after she told Rezek about Damien’s fake ring. Had he orchestrated it somehow?
She rifled through Damien’s desk, then his room, then stopped onthe threshold of Reid’s. It was not full of caskets like she’d thought all those weeks ago. Rather, it was the neat, orderly space of a soldier, or perhaps a mother hen, and it smelled of tea and paper. Directly across stood a four-poster bed, the dark navy comforter and sheets meticulously pressed. She’d drifted toward it before she realized what she was doing, her fingers brushing along the soft cotton, before she retracted her hand.
Scowling at herself, she quickly checked the nightstands and closet before moving on to the adjacent workroom. A narrow desk spread the length of the wall, stacked with neat piles of books and papers. Above hung an arrangement of drawings. The bones of the leg, the veins of the hand, the muscles of the lower back—they spread across the wall in charcoal and ink, precise, detailed, and methodically annotated.
She sifted through the stacks of papers but found only research and more anatomy diagrams. Careful to put everything back, she moved along the desk, but the only notable thing she found was a pile of thin glass packets whose purpose she couldn’t discern. One was cracked and stained inside with ink, the others intact but with a tiny, needle-sized hole in the ends for loading the ink.
Her elbow brushed a stack of folders, sending one sliding across the table. Papers spilled out and she paused with her hand outstretched to gather them back. These weren’t anatomical drawings.
She took in the curve of her own face, the hawklike bend to her nose, and the smattering of freckles across her face. Spreading the drawings out, she found one of her racing on Atara, another of her sitting by the fire with a cup of tea. The last showed a walk she and Reid had gone on after the second race—she recognized it because he’d drawn her clothes in exact detail, her hair still in Ari’s complex braid.
A thought pulled at her, like a glimpse of something out the corner of her eye. It rocked through her in waves of guilt and gusts of understanding.
Unable to look at the drawings any longer, she stuffed them hurriedly back into the folder, and picked up a scrap of paper she’d missed. It readI have a lead on the prince.
“Mikira?”
She whirled about, crumpling the paper in her hand.
Reid stood in the doorway, his skin flush from exertion. “What are you doing in here?”
She opened her mouth and found no words. Lying had never been her strong suit, and the sheer open confusion with which Reid was staring at her drove back any attempt she might have made.
“I needed to know,” she said at last. “About Damien. I needed to know who I was working with.”
Understanding shuttered Reid’s expression. “You’re spying.”
“I’m not! I’m looking for answers for myself.” And she was—she just hadn’t decided what to do if she found them. Once, she wouldn’t have hesitated, but things had changed the last couple of months.Shehad changed, and she wasn’t sure if she recognized herself any longer.
Reid stepped toward her. “Did Talyana put you up to this?”
The accusation sparked something inside her: a hot mess of indignation and guilt. She felt like a traitor. The look in Reid’s eyes said she was one. “I don’t work for Talyana. I didn’t know what she was! Unlike you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means how can you be friends with someone like him, Reid?” She thrust a hand toward Damien’s room.
Reid’s jaw set. “I know the person underneath.”
“The murderer?”
“My friend!” he snapped. “The person that gave me a home and a purpose when mine were taken from me.” He ran his hand through his hair, the wild mess of it matching the look in his eyes. “The Kelbras pushed my parents out of their house and into the streets, all because their land couldgrow verillion. And because we resisted them, the Kelbras made sure my parents wouldn’t find work anywhere. They starved, Kira. When Damien found me, I was alone and dying on the street, and he gave me—” Reid broke off, his jaw clenching.
“He gave me everything,” he said tightly. “Because he understood what it was to have something you care about ripped away from you. And he’s done the same thing for countless other people, you and Ari included, and this is how you repay him?”
The question prodded at her like a hot poker. Damien had told her that he wanted to make Enderlain a better place, and she’d believed him. She still did. He’d done more for her than almost anyone, and because of that, she’d ignored the rumors, ignored the possibility that Talyana might be right about him. Even now, she didn’t want to condemn him without inescapable proof, but she drew the line at enabling murder.
She withdrew the ring from her pocket. “I didn’t know who she was,” she said. “I thought she was my friend.”
